Poetry's power

Frank Evans (Letters, 21 February) "laughs" at the suggestion that politicians might improve their decision-making through the reading of poetry. In December 1919 John Maynard Keynes, a profound reader of poetry in a number of languages, published The Economic Consequences of the Peace, which was met with fury and disdain by the very unromantic bigots of the postwar British establishment, a response which caused Keynes to reflect: "I woke up like Lord Byron, famous and disreputable." Keynes always chose his words carefully and understood how much poetry matters as a marker and maker of a humane world and how much the "peace" of Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Co had betrayed that humanity. Perhaps Frank Evans doesn't know what he's been missing.Bruce Ross-SmithOxford